The Phases of the Moon
by W.H. Woolhat
Summary: Remus waxes nostalgic the day after a full moon and tells Sirius something surprising about their school days.


**The Phases of the Moon**

Author's Note:  This takes place sometime around _Order of the Phoenix_, although it's based more on the way Remus and Sirius's relationship is portrayed in the _Prisoner of Azkaban_ movie, as well as on a comment my friend made while we were seeing it.

                Remus Lupin sat at the kitchen table in Grimmauld Place, rubbing his neck and staring out the window with unseeing eyes.  He always felt a bit odd after the full moon: tired, sore, and emotionally drained.  For once, he was glad that most of the rest of the Order had business to attend to, and that very few people would be coming through the house for the next few days.

                He heard the front door open and he sighed.  That would be Sirius, back from walking himself and, no doubt, relieving himself against signposts.  Or possibly he had been telling the truth this time and had only gone out to do a bit of shopping at a Muggle market where no one would recognize him.  Either way, Remus wasn't particularly glad of his friend's return.  At the moment, he felt that he'd rather be left alone.

                Sirius entered the kitchen, whistling, and deposited a brown bag on the table.  He was obviously happy about his brief freedom from the decaying confines of Grimmauld Place, even if it had only been a grocery run.  He pulled a few things out of the bag and went about making tea, continuing to whistle cheerily.  It was only when he set the two cups of tea on the table that he got a good look at Remus.

                "You...look like you had a bad night," he commented slowly.

                "Mmhmm," Remus agreed, still rubbing his neck, "You know the tree that sprouted in the backyard a couple of months ago?  The one that's about two feet tall now?"

                "Yeah?  What about it?" Sirius asked, stirring milk and honey into his tea and not paying much attention.

                "It _is _a Whomping Willow."  Remus turned his head, revealing a series of red slash marks across the back of his neck.

                Sirius winced.  "Ouch."

                "And warn me the next time you're going to use silver cutlery, all right?" Remus requested icily.

                Sirius raised his eyebrows and, on a hunch, reached over and took his friend's hand.  He turned it upwards and saw that the palm was covered with what looked like burns, all in the distinctive seashell shape found on the handles of the good Black family silverware.  He sighed.

                "Moony, why do you _clean _when you're in a mood?  I told you this morning that I'd do the dishes and whatever else has piled up.  You need to rest, not run around the house like a lunatic.  I can tell you're high-strung; you're always in danger of snapping every second when it's...you know..."

                "Full moon," Remus finished the sentence bitterly, "That's the problem...it's _not _full moon anymore.  It was last night, but now...hell, it's been years.  I should be over these moods.  I should feel _normal_ the morning after."

                "Nobody could feel normal after a change like that," Sirius countered, "It's impossible.  It's too violent."

                Remus didn't seem convinced.  He sipped his tea and grimaced.

                "Look, Padfoot, this can't be normal," he said after a moment, his gaze traveling back to the window, "I've always known that being a werewolf isn't easy.  The transformations, the alienation, the loneliness, it all adds up.  Emotionally drained, I can understand, but this heaviness, this weight inside me...it's too much.  I should feel tired or angry; I shouldn't feel dead inside."

                "Dead."  Sirius repeated the word as if he didn't understand it.

                "Yes, dead," Remus shook his head and set his teacup down, "Dead, as I might as well be.  My life is forfeit.  I've done nothing except conceal my true nature, try to hide myself from people, make them think I'm normal enough to function.  I think I've found stability, but I always have to uproot, run, and hide.  Always hide, in the end."

                Sirius was beginning to feel disturbed by Remus's words.  He had been watching his friend's face closely, and it seemed to him that a dark cloud, different from the usual wizened sadness, had overtaken Remus's eyes.

                "Your life is hardly forfeit," he said, setting down his own teacup and giving Remus a steady look, "You're part of the Order, fighting forces that are threatening the whole world of wizarding.  And I know you only had the job at Hogwarts for a year, but you taught those kids things that they'd never have learned otherwise, especially Harry.  You know Harry and I owe our lives to what you taught him.  That's got to mean something to you."

                Remus looked away, down into his tea.  He couldn't deny what Sirius was saying, but the yawning emptiness inside him refused to abate.  Things were eating at him, things he'd thought he'd buried long ago, feelings he'd been so sure were dead, and he was finding that he had no way to deal with them.  The more he tried to stamp them down or bury them again, the more they flared up, filling the hole he felt with a fire that burned white-hot.

                "And we've always got the house to stay in," Sirius continued, "Sure, most of it's a moldy pit of decay, but it's better than exile, and it's _definitely _better than Azkaban."  He picked up his tea again and gave Remus a critical look over the top of the cup.  "We're the same, you know, Moony.  We've both got our secrets.  We both need to lay low.  It's nothing to be ashamed of."

                "No," Remus shook his head again, "No, because you know what the difference is for you, Sirius?  You know you're innocent.  You know you never hurt anybody, and you've got people who know it, too, family who loves you and people who want to protect you.  And what do I have?"  He stood up and paced the length of the table, his usually calm voice growing louder as he spoke.  "Rejection.  Humiliation.  The knowledge that, every single month, I'll turn into a mindless beast and may or may not wake up with someone's bones in my teeth.  The only certainty _I _have is that I'm a monster!"

                "That's not true..." Sirius began, but Remus cut him off.

                "Don't even say that, Padfoot; you _know _it's true, and you've got the scars to prove it.  You do too much, trying to keep me in line all the time, and it kills me to know I hurt you and have no idea what I'm doing when it happens.  One of these days, it's not going to work.  Some night, I'll overpower you, and..." he trailed off, gripping the edge of the table so hard that his knuckles turned white. 

                Sirius could only guess what was going through his friend's mind, and he was pretty sure it wouldn't be a good idea to say anything.  Despite everything that had gone on in their lives, he had never seen Remus quite so angry before.  Usually Remus was the one who handled things with a level head, who made everyone else think before acting, and who knew how to handle any crazy situation because he had been in most of them at one time or another.  Now he seemed so lost, so utterly alone in the middle of his own problems, that Sirius began to feel, for the first time, that he couldn't reach deep enough to pull his friend out of his personal darkness.  Nevertheless, he had to try.

                "You have your freedom," he said quietly, "Which is more than I have."

                "What gooddoes it do me?" Remus demanded hotly, "What _good _does it do me to be free when everyone rejects me?  I'm a prisoner in my own body!" 

                He suddenly let out a growl that sounded so like a wolf that Sirius had to stop himself from leaning back.  In one movement, and with surprising strength, Remus flipped the table over in a display of sheer rage.  Tea and broken china splashed across the floor, and the wood of the table splintered with a sickening crunch.

                "I'm a killer!" he screamed over the noise, "I'm a damn _killer _and I can't do anything about it!"

                He stood for a moment with his fists clenched at his sides, quivering, and then his fury seemed to leave him as suddenly as it had come and he stumbled to the window.  He clung desperately to the sill, shaking and sobbing.

                Sirius remained seated, momentarily stunned.  He looked from the mess on the floor to Remus and back again before getting up and joining Remus at the window.  Without a word, he slipped his arm around Remus's shoulders and gave the man a gentle hug.  Finally, Remus calmed down and was still as he stared out the window, breathing raggedly.

                "Did I ever tell you about Lily?" he asked suddenly, his voice soft.

                This caught Sirius off-guard.  "Lily Potter?"

                "Well," Remus smiled wanly, "She was still Lily Evans at the time."

                "Ah," Sirius nodded leaned forward, resting his elbows on the windowsill, "This is a school story."

                Remus shook his head.  "No, it's more about me, I'm afraid.  Are you sure I never told you?"

                "I don't remember you telling me anything about Lily, except that you thought she was pretty," Sirius replied.

                "Yes, I did," Remus's voice was nearly a whisper.

                Sirius turned to inspect his friend's face again.  He could tell that something big was coming, some sort of emotional confession that Remus had never allowed himself to make, and he wasn't quite sure what to expect.  Eventually, he said,

                "Well, everyone said that, so I didn't think much of it when you told me."

                Remus sighed.  "I don't think anybody did.  Lily was so well liked; what did it matter if one more boy joined the crowd?  At least at that point, nobody knew who I was or what I was, except the Marauders."

                Sirius chuckled.  "Those were the days."

                "They were."  Remus put his chin in his hand and sighed again.  There was silence for a while as Sirius waited, knowing that there must be more coming.

                "And even then," Remus continued suddenly, "Before things got serious between the two of them, James drove Lily absolutely crazy.  He never toned down his antics around her, even though he knew that she was afraid he was headed for serious trouble someday.  He just wasn't capable of giving her what she needed, not then.  And he was too high on youth to really notice."

                Sirius glanced sidelong at Remus when he paused, wondering how he'd come to know so much about Lily when James had always seemed to be the only one of her admirers who ever got personal time with her.  Remus picked up on the implications of the glance and went on.

                "One day in fifth year, when I was in the library, I heard what sounded like someone crying.  I followed the sound and came across Lily, sitting between two rows of shelves in the back with a book in her lap, sobbing.  Apparently James had blown her off for another girl, or something equally as juvenile, and she hadn't wanted him to see how upset she was by it.

                "I was surprised, naturally.  I'd thought at the time that James really cared about Lily.  But she was very upset and I couldn't just stand there doing nothing, so I comforted her and we got to talking.  And, somehow, I became her confidant.  After that day, whenever Lily had a problem, she always came to me.  Sometimes they were just little things, like worries over school or friends, but usually it was something about James.  The number of times she cried on my shoulder because of something he'd done," Remus shook his head, "I can't count them.  She might have been tough on the outside and appeared to brush off James' behavior, but inside she cared about him so much that it hurt her, and it hurt me to see her in pain.

                "I spent a lot of time being angry at James for what he was doing to Lily.  Yes, I was very close to him, but that year...she seemed closer.  But it was plain that her heart belonged to James.  No matter how many times he did something stupid, she went back.  She believed that he'd change, and we know she was right in the end, but that year I thought the whole thing was lunacy.  Half the school was willing to go out with her, but she only wanted James.

                "But then, in spring term, things changed.  One day while we were walking on the school grounds, Lily announced that James was not worth the trouble and that she was giving up on him.  At first I thought her friends had somehow changed her mind for her, but when I looked in her eyes, I could see that she was just plain sick of being hurt.  And in my own mind, I felt that it might be good for her to stop spending all her time on him, to finally have a break from the heartache he'd been giving her all year.  I didn't tell her that, though; I just nodded and accepted her decision, and we went back to the school.

                "I never expected things to go the way they did after that.  Even though we were in full swing with our business as the Marauders, I still found myself spending a lot of time with Lily.  At first, we mostly studied together or took walks, you know, the same sort of things we'd been doing all year, but after a while...it changed.  We started sharing secrets that you don't reveal to just any friend.  We spent hours doing ridiculous things like casting Cheering Charms on each other and laughing at nothing.  It was so different, so refreshing for me, to just spend time with someone like that.  But the whole time, I knew that there was one secret that I couldn't tell, one dark spot that the laughter couldn't chase away.  And every day I had to wonder how long our time would last."

                Remus paused again, and rubbed his hands together as if he were cold.  When he spoke again, his eyes had a faraway look.

                "We almost kissed, once.  Late in spring term, we were out by the lake in the evening, just watching the surface ripple in the wind.  And then we looked at each other, just looked, and something clicked.  We got so close that our foreheads were nearly touching.  I can remember the way Lily turned her face up, the way her skin felt under my hands...it was one of those moments where everything is suspended in the air and you can hear your own heart beating.  It seemed to go on for ages, the two of us there on the edge of something that could have been wonderful.

                "But of course, I realized then, right in the middle of the happiest of moments, that I couldn't let it happen.  I knew that I could never offer her what she was looking for.  Nothing was stable then, least of all me.  And I knew that, as much as I cared, as much as I wanted to kiss her right at that moment and go wherever it took us, I couldn't break her heart the way James had.  I had to let her go, for her sake.  And I thought that, somewhere deep inside of her, she still loved James no matter what she told people.

                "So that was it.  No kiss, just a single breathless moment that ended any chance we had of being more than friends.  And when she started showing and interest in James again at the end of the year, I felt that I had to encourage her to go after him.  I had to keep myself distanced from her so that I could pretend I had forgotten what happened."

                "But you never did," Sirius said quietly, "Oh Moony, I'm so sorry."

                "Oh," Remus laughed sadly as he turned his back to the window and leaned his elbows on the sill, "That wasn't the last of it.  Lily and I stayed friends, you know that, and early in sixth year I finally had to tell her the whole truth.  I couldn't live with letting her think that I'd thrown everything away because I was a stupid teenager.

                "So I managed to find a private enough place to talk to her, and I told her I was a werewolf.  And you know what she did?  She laughed and said she already knew.  She was smart; she'd figured it out almost a year before and never said anything because she didn't care.  She knew what I was the _whole time_ we were together and she didn't care at _all_.  That meant more to me than anyone could possibly imagine; it still does.  But it couldn't take away the fact that I am what I am, and I still couldn't give Lily anything.

                "And the rest, as you know, is history.  School ended, Lily married James, and we all went through hell with You-Know-Who.  And here we are."

                Sirius shook his head sadly.  "I wish you'd told me."

                "Well, I told you now," Remus sighed and looked away, "God, I loved her so much.  Sometimes I think that if I could've given her the world, I would have married her and none of this would have happened.  Then I think about James and wonder if I'm selfish."

                "No," Sirius replied, "You're not selfish, Remus.  You did the right thing because you knew it was right, even though you didn't want to do it.  If James had known, he would have tried his hardest –"

                "To keep Lily and I together, I know," Remus nodded, "That's why I never told him, although I always thought he had his suspicions.  But Lily ended up with the one who was better for her, and that's what matters, I guess."

                Sirius laughed shortly and pulled Remus into a brotherly embrace.

                "When you get in a mood, you really get in a mood, don't you?" he said with a smile.

                Remus laughed, as well.  "I suppose I do.  Come on," he pulled out of the hug and went over to the upturned table, "Let's get this cleaned up."

THE END


End file.
